The Atlantic

The New Era of Political Violence Is Here

The danger is not organized civil war but individual Americans with deep resentments and delusions.
Source: Elijah Nouvelage / Getty

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I’ve been thinking about the threats against law enforcement and Trump’s barely veiled warning to Attorney General Merrick Garland about a “country on fire.” We should no longer wonder if we can avert a new era of political violence in the United States. It’s already here.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.


A Deepening Void

is among the many terms we now use too easily. The American Civil War was a bloodbath driven by the inevitable confrontation between the Union and the organized forces of sedition during a panel on political violence in America, was about . Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.

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